OVERSIGHT | The New York Police Department’s 26th Precinct in Manhattanville. Local politicians applauded a decision by a federal judge that appointed a monitor of the department. BY CASEY TOLAN, AVANTIKA KUMAR,?Spectator Senior Staff Writers,?August 12, 4:14pm

A federal judge ruled on Monday that the New York Police Department’s stop and frisk policy violated the constitutional rights of minorities, a major victory for Upper Manhattan politicians, who have unanimously opposed the controversial tactic.

While Judge Shira Scheindlin did not order the end of the controversial practice, in which police officers stop people they suspect may commit a crime and frisk them for illegal weapons or drugs, she appointed lawyer?Peter Zimroth, CC ’63, as a federal monitor for the NYPD, and called for several other checks on the department.

Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, in New York. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Bloomberg News

By Michael McDonald on April 26, 2012

Lee Bollinger had yet to take over as president of Columbia University in 2002 when he toured a largely industrial area about 10 blocks north of the historic campus on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Columbia, the fifth-oldest U.S. college, was scouting new sites to expand as it outgrew its century-old, Beaux-Arts home in Morningside Heights. Traveling past faded warehouses, auto shops and scattered apartments above 125th Street in West Harlem, Bollinger could see the ideal location for a modern urban campus, stretching from the elevated subway line on Broadway with its monumental steel trestles to the West Side Highway next to the Hudson River.

“It was an area that I think was beautiful but nobody else thought it was beautiful,” Bollinger, 65, said in an interview last month. “Lots and lots of people said to me why would you move there? It’s ugly.”

The leadership organizations of both undergraduate and graduate students at The Fu Foundation School of Engineering at Columbia University are pleased to announce today that alumnae Ursula M. Burns, chairman and chief executive officer of Xerox Corporation, will be the keynote speaker for Columbia Engineering’s Class Day ceremony, which will be held on May 14, 2012. The Engineering Senior Class Council, representing undergraduates, and the Engineering Graduate Student Council, representing MS, PhD, and professional degree students, jointly selected Ms. Burns as their graduation speaker for 2012.

Burns, who earned her M.S. in mechanical engineering in 1982 from Columbia Engineering, was named chief executive officer of Xerox in 2009 and, shortly after, made the largest acquisition in Xerox history—the $6.4 billion purchase of Affiliated Computer Services, catapulting the company’s presence in the $500 billion business services market and extending its reach into diverse areas of business process and IT outsourcing. In 2010, she became chairman of the company, which has 140,000 people serving clients in more than 160 countries.

(PANTHER • POET •PROFESSOR• PRISONER • OSCAR NOMINEE) Professor Joseph will be making stops throughout the country for readings of his new book Panther Baby. In Panther Baby, which will be released in February, Professor Joseph details what it meant to be a soldier inside the militant Black Panther movement. He recounts a harrowing, sometimes deadly imprisonment as he charts his path to manhood—a path which eventually brought him back to Columbia University.

John B. King Jr., who credits teachers for helping him surmount an isolated childhood as an orphan in Brooklyn and who ran celebrated charter schools in New York and Massachusetts, was named Monday as the state’s next education commissioner, with a unanimous vote of the Board of Regents.

At 36, Dr. King, who previously served as deputy commissioner, will be among the nation’s youngest educational leaders, though he had been the clear front-runner since the current commissioner, David M. Steiner, announced in April that he would resign.

After losing both of his parents to illness by age 12, Dr. King earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard, a law degree from Yale and a doctorate in education from Columbia. In between, he co-founded Roxbury Prep, a top charter middle school in Massachusetts; led Uncommon Schools, a network of charters based in New York; and married and had two daughters.

Don’t miss this day full of history & inspiration

We are celebrating 40 years as New York City’s 19th neighborhood to be recognized of the over 125 since 1965 when Mayor Robert Wagner established the Landmarks Preservation Commission in response to New Yorkers’ growing concern that important historic, aesthetic, and cultural elements of the city’s history were being lost. The Self-Guided Walking Tour takes guests inside 12 original and renovated brownstone homes, fascinating urban live/work apartments, a renown museum, a beautiful community garden and a landmark church. Guided Architectural Walking Tours are scheduled throughout the day, as well as a tour through Marcus Garvey Park up to the Acropolis where the 154-year-old, landmarked, cast iron Harlem Fire Watchtower still stands.Inside & Intimate in Historic Harlem guided tours take guests inside three extraordinary homes in the Mount Morris Park Historic District that are not on the regular tour and are ordinarily strictly private.Harlem’s Mount Morris Park community is rich with long-time residents as well as newcomers from all over the world. One of the homes featured this year will be hosted by a Harlem denizen and her family — a near-centenarian who tells stories of the times she, her family and neighbors “stood in front of bulldozers” to protect the then city-owned buildings from being demolished. Another resident will share how she’s turned her home into a “music and mentoring house” for the next generation of opera singers. History in Motion… Don’t miss this once a year chance to step inside the special places that highlight the community’s shared culture of honoring the past, celebrating the present and preparing for the future.

The public is invited to attend a Celebration of the Life of Dr. Manning Marable onThursday May 26, 2011 at 5:30pm
on the Morningside Campus of Columbia University
Roone Alredge Auditorium, Lerner Hall (115th Street & Broadway)